Each year millions of businesses fail. Fifty percent of small businesses fail in the first year and 95 percent of small businesses fail in the first five years. Many of them do not succeed due to theft. Yes, many companies experience theft and understand that people will attempt to steal their products, material and services. However, what do you do when the thieves are your own employees?

We would recommend performing unannounced tours and limit the amount of employees that know your schedule. We know this may not be possible for all businesses, but is important to see how everyone is working when you are not supposed to be there; you want employees to work as if someone was watching them at all times. Remember time is money and if your employees are wasting their time, they are also wasting your money!

Many businesses should also be utilizing “employee testing.” This is a great tool for problem employees as well as for training purposes. Employee testing is something that is very cost-effective and that you can do by yourself with the help of a friend.

This can be surveillance of personnel that are doing deliveries to ensure they are following procedures or testing an employee in a retail store to see if they are trustworthy.

An example of this would be going into a store to purchase merchandise and offering the employee less than the stated value, but in cash. What you see many times is that the employee pockets the cash and the person leaves with the merchandise, so utilizing a hidden camera is recommended.

We realize that we all want to trust our employees since our employees are what our businesses rely on. They are who we need to have our business succeed and their hard work and dedication is what separates us from our competition. It’s their face and personalities that represents our businesses to the public. They are the people that we trust to protect our business.

My question is what happens when we don’t watch the employees? What happens when we hire someone that does not have your company’s best interest in mind? If the employees are watching the business, then who is watching the employees? Don’t have your business become a statistic.

John Rafferty is a retired NYPD lieutenant. He formed Watch Guard 24/7, a private investigation and security company, in 2009.